THE “UNSINKABLE” MOLLY BROWN

During the Mercury program, in the same way in which service pilots personalized a particular aircraft by giving it a nickname, the astronauts had been permitted to name their capsule and use the name as the official call sign for the mission. Much to their annoyance this custom was rescinded by NASA during the Gemini program, when mis­sion managers decided to utilize the mission name as the official spacecraft call sign.

An obstinate Grissom decided to give his Gemini spacecraft an unofficial name. At first, he and John Young toyed with the idea of an American Indian name, but then he read that the musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown was nearing the end of its Broadway run, and this gave him the idea for a humorous repost to the splashdown drama on his previous flight.

“I’d been accused of being more than a little sensitive about the loss of my Liberty Bell 7, and it struck me that the best way to squelch this idea was to kid [about] it. And from what I knew about our Gemini spacecraft, I felt certain it would indeed be unsinkable. So John and I agreed that we’d christen our baby Molly Brown”

While some sympathetic NASA officials found the name quite amusing, others certainly didn’t, and he was told to think of something more respectable. When he responded with “Sure… how about the Titanic?” it became quite evident that this determined astronaut was not going to yield without a fight. A sense of resignation finally set in, and the officials partially relented. The spacecraft to be flown on the Gemini-Titan 3 mission would thereafter be known – unofficially – as the Molly Brown.

But this would be the last time a Gemini crew was given any sort of latitude to christen a spacecraft, although they were allowed to design personalized shoulder patches. As well, all succeeding Gemini flights would be identified using Roman numerals, starting with Gemini-Titan IV (GT-IV).